Time to choose

                                                    

Believing in Jesus as Savior isn’t hard. Following Him as Lord — that’s the hard part.

We want to do things our way, not His, because we do not love Him enough to obey Him.

The saddest part of the story of Jonah, one of history’s most reluctant missionaries, is not that he took off in the opposite direction when God told him to go to the wicked city of Nineveh. It’s not that he got angry and depressed when he finally preached to the city and saw all the people there repent and believe. It’s not that he cared more about his own personal comfort than the souls of the Ninevites (see Jonah 4).

The saddest part is that he fled “from the presence of the Lord” (Jonah 1:3 NASB). How could he love the Ninevites if he didn’t love the Lord?

The Lord certainly cared about the Ninevites. They had committed all sorts of abominations, but they didn’t know any better. He asked Jonah, “And should I not have compassion on Nineveh, the great city in which there are more than 120,000 persons … ?” (Jonah 4:11a NASB). But Jonah was too preoccupied with himself, his needs, his cold heart, his foolish pride.

That’s us. That’s me, at least. I want to serve God only. I want to follow Him. I want to make disciples among the nations — just as soon as I finish all the other things I need (i.e., want) to do. I’m like the young Augustine, called by God out of a fourth-century Roman culture saturated in immorality, who famously prayed, “Lord, grant me purity — but not yet.”

Tomorrow, Lord, I will give You my whole heart. I promise, just like I promised yesterday and the day before that.

The Apostle James had little patience for two-timing believers:

“You adulteresses, do you not know that friendship with the world is hostility toward God? Therefore whoever wishes to be a friend of the world makes himself an enemy of God. Or do you think that the Scripture speaks to no purpose: ‘He jealously desires the Spirit which He has made to dwell in us’? But He gives a greater grace. Therefore it says, ‘God is opposed to the proud, but gives grace to the humble.’ Submit therefore to God. Resist the devil and he will flee from you. Draw near to God and He will draw near to you. Cleanse your hands, you sinners; and purify your hearts, you double-minded” (James 4:4-8, NASB).

Double-mindedness is a plague in the American church, which now finds itself in hostile surroundings similar to those faced by Augustine and James’ halfhearted disciples. Our culture no longer accommodates the gospel; it despises it. That’s a blessing in this sense: The days when you could comfortably fence-sit with a toe in each camp are coming to a close.

The time for choosing has arrived.

The culture will tolerate a one-dimensional Jesus who accepts everything, judges nothing and requires neither inner transformation nor outer change. The Jesus of the New Testament is someone else altogether: He refused to condemn the woman caught in adultery, telling her angry accusers, “He who is without sin among you, let him be the first to throw a stone at her” (John 8:7, NASB). After they left one by one, He asked her, “‘Woman, where are they? Did no one condemn you?’ She said, ‘No one, Lord.’ And Jesus said, ‘I do not condemn you, either. Go. From now on sin no more’” (John 8:10b,11).

Revisionists love to edit out that last part, but it’s the whole point of Jesus’ encounter with the woman. Once He dismissed the hypocrites, He bestowed the amazing grace and mercy of God on a sinner, but commanded repentance and obedience.

Years ago a missionary in Zambia visited a village that expressed interest in the gospel. He asked to see the village chief to seek permission to return. The missionary sat in the shade of a mango tree, waiting for the chief to come. A few minutes later, he noticed an old man hobbling toward him through the sand, leaning heavily on a stick to support his lame leg. The old chief considered the missionary’s request and gave him permission to return.

The missionary and a volunteer team came back a few weeks later to share the gospel through Bible storying. After four days of teaching, a line was drawn in the sand. The villagers were challenged to walk across the line if they were willing to turn away from their sin and make Jesus their Lord.

The first person to move was the old chief. He struggled across the line, dragging his crippled leg. When he finally made it, he looked up and declared to everyone, “I want Jesus to be my Lord!” He later was baptized, setting the stage for transformation of the whole village.

That’s a decision we need to make anew as followers of Christ. The line has been drawn.

(What could God do with your life if you choose to follow Him? Explore the possibilities here and here.) 

Location, location, location (expanded)

(Listen to an audio version of this post at
http://media1.imbresources.org/files/62/6230/6230-33955.mp3)

The lightning speed with which the global economic crisis has spread from one financial capital to another — heedless of national borders — seems to confirm a basic tenet of globalization: The world is flat.

Writer Thomas Friedman made that proposition famous with his influential book of the same name (The World Is Flat: Expanded Edition Thomas L. Friedman). The basic idea: Interconnected technology, trade, communication and mobility have tied us all together so tightly that national and cultural barriers are becoming increasingly porous, even irrelevant.

Not so fast.

In a new book, The Power of Place: Geography, Destiny, and Globalization's Rough Landscape, Michigan State University professor Harm de Blij argues that location still matters — a lot.

“Earth may be a planet of shrinking functional differences, but it remains a world of staggering situational differences,” de Blij writes. “From the uneven distribution of natural resources to the unequal availability of opportunity, place remains a powerful arbitrator. Many hundreds of millions of farmers in river basins of Asia and Africa live their lives much as their distant ancestors did, still remote from the forces of globalization. …

“In their lifetimes, this vast majority will have worn the garb, spoken the language, professed the faith, shared the health conditions, absorbed the education, acquired the attitudes, and inherited the legacy that constitutes the power of place: the accumulated geography whose formative imprint still dominates the planet.”

“Global playing fields” are leveling for many, de Blij acknowledges. But he warns that assuming a homogenized, borderless, “flat” world is now the rule — just because you can find identical high-rises, malls and office parks “from Minneapolis to Mumbai” — is a mistake. The urban economic boom of China and high-tech industries of India get plenty of publicity. Out in the rural vastness of both Asian giants, however, countless millions continue to struggle for existence — seemingly a universe away from the growth centers of their own nations.

Despite modern mobility and massive migrations, fewer than 3 percent of human beings are “mobals” who live in a country where they were not born. An even smaller minority make up the “globals” who have access to all the advantages of modern technology and travel. The rest of us are “locals” — still tied, for better or worse, to the cultures that spawned us.

So why has the International Mission Board begun to move away from dividing its missionaries by location or region — South Asia, West Africa, etc. — and toward “global affinity groups” that focus on peoples sharing the same language, culture or ethnicity?

Because “place” is a state of mind and heart as much as a physical location. The most powerful “place” is culture.

Even though the vast majority of humans still are “locals,” their migrating “mobal” cousins often hold the key to reaching them. The new “global affinity groups” will be designed so missionaries can more effectively engage unreached peoples regardless of their location.

“This move recognizes the mobility of populations,” explains Gordon Fort, IMB vice president of overseas operations. “(It) allows us to focus on peoples wherever they are in the world.”

Missionaries will still focus on peoples living in specific locations — most unreached South Asians still live in South Asia, after all. But they won’t be “artificially limited by geopolitical considerations,” as Fort puts it. Millions of South Asians have migrated to other parts of the world and often are more accessible in their new homes.

Christians must continue to traverse both literal and figurative back roads, dirt tracks, mountains and valleys to take the Gospel to every people — even in the chaotic cultural environment of megacities. There is no “flat” superhighway to world evangelization.

“In our current rush to embrace the rewards of global ‘flattening,’ it is worth reminding ourselves that point of entry continues to matter when it comes to opportunities in reach,” de Blij writes.

For transmitting the love of Christ to all peoples, our key points of entry are language, culture and ethnicity. That means mobilizing churches, missionaries and local believers to take the Gospel to every part of the globe’s “rough landscape” — whether the “place” is a physical location or a cultural/spiritual stronghold.